The Flaming Motel

VI


“We can’t pay for information.” Jendrek punctured the yolks on his over-easy eggs and let them run all over his hash browns. He laughed and stirred the mess on his plate until it was a gooey, glistening glob of egg and potato. “I mean, come on Ollie. Ten grand? Are you kidding? What if this kid just shows up and tells you something we already know? What if he shows up with some thug and they mug you and just take it? And what’s worse, what if he does actually know something? The fact that we paid him to tell us would kill us in court. No one will believe him.”

I shrugged and yawned, leaning back into the cracked, Naugahyde booth. I was exhausted. When I’d gotten home at three thirty, Liz was there, mumbling at me in the shadows, asking how things went. She’d been home and sleeping for hours. Nothing suspicious about that. I forgot about Ben Cross and crawled in next to her, but it still took forever to fall asleep. Now that it was almost noon, I felt like I could pass out on command.

I said, “Who said anything about court? It was more curiosity than anything. Something strange about the way it all happened is bugging me and I can’t figure out why.” I thought about it for a minute and added, “The kid was scared last night. He sure as hell thinks he knows something. It might be interesting to know what it is.”

I ate a piece of ham and sipped my coffee. Jendrek thought it over while I watched the old men at the counter. Iggy’s Diner had been in West LA for forty years if it had been there a day. It wasn’t one of those new diners trying to look vintage. It was the real thing. The waitress came and refilled our coffee. She looked vintage too, like she’d been serving coffee her entire life.

Jendrek poured cream and sugar into his cup and said, “Given that criminal history the detective read you, it’s as likely some loan shark got to him as anything else. Either way, what does it have to do with us? We were hired to sue the cops, not investigate Pete Stick’s suicide and try to prove it was something else. With Pete gone, our case is as good as over.” He tried his coffee and shook his head. “It’s a damned shame though. It would have been nice to have the case, even if it was a loser. I hate to give that retainer back.”

“Tell me about it.” I ate a couple more bites and ran it all through again, for the thousandth time. No matter how I looked at it, I always came up with the same thing: Pete Stick was not a guy who would kill himself. But Jendrek was right, it wasn’t our case, it wasn’t our problem. As lawyers, we were only supposed to care about what we were paid to care about. But I couldn’t let it go.

“What if he does have something to say? I mean, he said it would blow our minds. What if he’s right?”

Jendrek smirked and said, “Do I look like I need my mind blown? Come on, Ollie, this is nuts.”

“But what do we care? We’ve already got Vargas’s retainer. Vargas might be willing to spend some of it to find out what the kid has to say.” Jendrek rolled his eyes and thought about it. I added, “All it’ll take is one phone call to ask him.”

He could see I wasn’t going to drop it. After another minute, he snatched his cell phone off the table and slid out of the booth. I watched him standing outside dialing the phone, listening to it ring, and then talking.

I remembered the first time I’d seen him, the first week of law school. Thirty twitching students waiting in a classroom at UCLA for their legal writing course to begin. In walked Jendrek with that odd combination of scowl and smile that he wore most of the time. Five minutes into that first class a woman raised her hand and started by saying, nervously, “This might be a stupid questions, but”—Jendrek cut her off and said, “There are no stupid questions, only stupid people, who ask questions.” I knew I’d like him then and there.

But that, years later, I’d end up in practice with him, sitting in a greasy spoon in West LA on a Saturday morning, talking about paying a bribe for information, was baffling. If someone would have leaned over and whispered that in my ear during that first class, I’d have said they were crazy. But if I was learning anything as I got older, it was that life turns out crazy sometimes. Or maybe the line between crazy and normal was so razor thin you could hardly see it half the time.

Jendrek’s number one rule of thumb was ‘suspect everyone’ because reality is often even weirder than anything you can imagine. That was why he was on the phone. That was why I knew he’d make the call in the first place. Mark Jendrek had more curiosity and suspicion than he could use, and sometimes I played it against him.

When the call was over, he snapped his flip-phone shut and came back in. He was smiling as he slid into the booth. He picked up his fork and pointed at my plate. “Eat up, Hoss. That Cajun place at the Farmer’s Market has crappy food.”

An hour later, we were at the bank, stuffing ten grand in hundreds into a standard white envelope. It was a tight fit. Jendrek joked as he tried to close the flap over the cash. “I should have brought an envelope from home. I always make sure the ones I buy can hold at least ten grand.”

I snatched it from him and stuffed it in the inside pocket of my jacket. “Alright then,” I said. “I’ll call you from Vegas if I hit it big.”

“For a second, I thought you said Vargas.” He winked and added, “I’ll be at the office, waiting.”

We parted ways in the parking lot. It was one thirty. I’d make it to the Farmer’s Market with a few minutes to spare. The traffic on Santa Monica was light and I cruised through West Hollywood without any trouble. The weather was just as clear as the day before and the outdoor cafes and coffee shops were crowded with people still dressing for summer. I turned right on Fairfax, headed south to the Farmer’s Market, and parked in the old lot near the street.

The Farmer’s Market had been there for decades. It used to be an odd combination of fruit and vegetable vendors and permanent shops that were open year round. Most of the shops sold kitschy souvenirs, incense and candles, or junky T-shirts. The whole thing had the feel of a carnival that had stayed in town way too long. But in true LA fashion, they’d gone and built an upscale shopping mall around it. The open-air food court with its vendor stalls and a central courtyard full of tables was still there though, but now hemmed in by a Banana Republic and its surrounding citizenry of Nordstrom, an Apple Store, chain restaurants, and a ridiculous trolley running the length of the mall.

I took a seat by the Cajun place and felt the envelope in my coat pocket as I sat. It was only then that I felt a little nervous about sitting around with that kind of cash. But the Market was pretty crowded. There were twenty or more people sitting around at the tables and a lot more milling around through the shops and stands. It would be a bad place to try a robbery.

At exactly two o’clock, I got up and bought a lemonade from the Cajun guy. I felt bad just sitting there in front of his place. As I sat again, I realized how tired I was and started to wonder how much sleep I’d really gotten. Liz and I were up and walking to the coffee shop on Montana Avenue by nine, so it couldn’t have been much. As we walked, she asked me all about what had happened at the warehouse, what I’d learned from the cops, but she seemed distracted.

Then she reminded me of the conference she was attending in San Diego on Monday. She’d be home Tuesday night. She told me she’d decided to drive down today to spend the weekend with her mother. Liz had grown up in San Diego. Her mother still lived there. Driving down early was a perfectly logical and reasonable thing to do. But all I could think of was Ben Cross. I asked her who all was going as casually as I could. She said everyone. But she might as well have just said Ben and her. That’s all I heard. That was all I cared about.

At 2:10, I started to wonder where the kid was. I started to fidget and get restless, despite my exhaustion, or perhaps because of it. I felt the envelope again. Still there. Where else would it be? I thought about Liz driving down to San Diego. How much of what she told me was the truth? I finished the lemonade as I thought about it. Then I started questioning myself. When had I become so irrational? When had I become a jealous guy, suspicious of everything she did? And was it really about her behavior, or my own?

It had only just happened. Ben Cross had only been at Legal Aid a couple of months and it took awhile for me to start feeling insecure. I was pretty sure I hid it well. I doubted Liz had any idea how her interaction with Ben made me feel. Why would she think I was jealous? And, as I thought about it, I realized I didn’t know why I was reacting this way. Liz had never done anything wrong. She’d never done anything to hurt me.

Not yet. I told myself. Not yet. But this is how it starts. Office flirtation, escalating to moments of temptation—alone together in the office, late at night, or traveling together on a business trip—Liz hadn’t done anything yet, but she could. And then the obvious hit me. My jealousy wasn’t a product of Liz having cheated on me, it was the result of my having cheated on her.

At 2:40, I started to suspect the kid wasn’t going to show.

I walked into our small suite of offices and tossed the envelope on Jendrek’s desk. “The kid didn’t show.”

Jendrek eyed me over the top of his reading glasses and shrugged. Then glanced down at the envelope and laughed, “We could always say he did and keep the ten grand ourselves.”

“That’s just what I need, to get disbarred over ten grand.”

“Just think of it, Ollie. You’d be saved from being a lawyer, from being a parasite on society. You’re young, you could still become a respectable person.” Jendrek laughed at his own joke and locked the thick envelope in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet next to his desk. He called it the smoking gun drawer. He said that was where he locked the smoking guns when his clients came in and dropped them on his desk as they confessed to murder. Life never really happened like that, but Jendrek had a drawer ready, just in case it ever did.

I took a seat in the chair opposite Jendrek. “So what now? What do you think?”

He didn’t have much to say. He rubbed his eyes and said, “Well, I suppose that kid didn’t really matter one way or the other. He was just a distraction, anyway. With Stick dead, it’s going to be tough to do much with this case. I guess I need to sleep on it.” Then he reached over and turned the speakerphone on. The room filled with a dial tone. “I told Ed Vargas we’d call him to tell him what the kid said.”

Jendrek dialed and Ed Vargas picked up on the second ring.

“This is Ed.”

“Ed, Mark Jenrek and Ollie Olson.”

“Hey guys. What’d Dave say?”

“Was that his name?”

“Yeah, Dave, David. I don’t know what his last name was. I never needed to know it.”

“Well, he didn’t show. So he didn’t say much.”

There was a brief pause, and then Ed said, “Well, alright, f*ck it. I guess it doesn’t matter.” The sound of rustling paper briefly consumed his voice as he moved his mouth away from the phone. Then he came back on and said, “Sorry about that. I’m just trying to straighten some shit out. Everything’s a f*cking mess around here.”

“If this is a bad time,” Jendrek started to say, but Ed cut him off.

“No, no, really, it’s no problem. It’s just … I’m sure you can imagine. It’s just that Dad was not the most organized person in the world, and the more I dig around trying to find stuff, the more of a f*cking mess I realize everything is. He’s got paperwork everywhere.” There was more rustling, then he added, almost a mumbling afterthought, “That f*cking wife of his isn’t making it any easier.”

Jendrek and I shot each other a look. Mine suspicious, his amused. “Well, I suppose we’ll need to talk sometime soon about this whole thing. We didn’t mean to bother you—”

“No, hey, look, it’s cool.” Ed’s mood had shifted quickly, as though he was trying to drown out his small burst of anger with a flood of ebullience. “Look, this whole funeral thing, all of this stuff, it’s just overwhelming. We should talk. Hey, why don’t you guys come on up to the house tomorrow night. We’re having the wake, but it’s really just a casual party for a bunch of people. Come on up—you know, if you feel like it, no pressure or anything—and we can talk. Or if not, we’ll talk Monday morning.”

Jendrek looked at the phone like he wasn’t sure what to say to it. “Uh, yeah,” he began, smiling at me. “We’ll talk either Sunday or Monday. Whatever is good for you.”

“I’m serious guys. Come on up to the house tomorrow night. We’ll all relax, cook some steaks, you can meet some of the people who knew Dad. It’ll just be a good time.” He paused for a second, and then added, “Hey, Ollie.”

I jumped at my name, surprised he was talking directly to me. “Yeah?”

“Hey man, I’m serious, come on up here tomorrow night and have a good time. Really. There’s going to be a shitload of people here. It’s no biggie.” He was talking like the two of us were old college buddies. I wasn’t sure what to say. I looked at Jendrek and shrugged.

I said, “Uh, yeah man, I’ll see if I can make it.”

When we got off the call, Jendrek laughed and shook his head. “Man,” he said. “Sounds like our boy Eddie is under some stress.”

“Sounds like he and Mom aren’t getting on too well.” I grinned.

“Maybe he’s realized he’s not going to inherit anything. That’ll sure f*ck up your weekend.”